Lecture Activity: Development of E-Commerce Site:



Lecture Activity: Development of E-Commerce Site: Phase 2 – Elaboration

Assigned: 11/13/07

Submitted to Blackboard by: Tuesday, 11/20 at 1:00PM

Points: 3 1/3 points on your Final Exam

Lecture In-class Team Activity to be Completed Outside of Class

Elaboration (Requirements Gathering and Conceptual Models of the Systems and Subsystems)

Approval:

Congratulations! Your company’s directors have tentatively approved your team’s concept for an exciting new Web-based (or partially Web-based) business. They feel that your team’s proposal has merit and has the potential to become a major success and Web presence that ultimately will spin off as an independent organization. They also feel that the support required from the existing infrastructure seems reasonable for running this type of business, at least initially.

The directors are impressed with what you have done on completing the Pre-Inception, Inception, and a little bit of the Elaboration phases of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC, see pp. 162-163 of the text and Figure 1 of the Part 1 assignment writeup). At this point, they want to move into the next part of the project,

The directors have tentatively decided to build the Web site in-house rather than to outsource or offshore the development. And since your team came up with the idea, they have entrusted the project to you. You own it! Ultimately, before the end of the semester, they will want to see a functional prototype.

Elaboration:

They want you to get started on specifying the details of the functional prototype. Consequently, they have given your team a budget ($$) and a time frame (wks) in which to build the functional prototype. So, you will manage this part like a project.

At this point, you know that your team should be doing requirements gathering. You will be gathering requirements for the e-commerce idea and deciding what to really put into the functional prototype. Consider the four pillars of a Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) project (see Figure 6.4, p. 163).

Consider the various aspects of people, management, tools and methodology in this project. Specific issues to address include:

People:

Describe the many people currently and to be involved in the project, what their roles are, and required skills. Think in terms of your existing team’s skill set and how you must augment it. You obviously need a Project manager, some programmers, some systems engineers, some hardware specialists, secretaries, etc. Consider how much you will pay these people and for how long in establishing your budget. (You don’t need to pay rent on a facility, because you will be developing it initially in house).

Some Salary Information:

A salaried DB Programmer in Atlanta earns, on average, $27.03 per hour. We include overhead (insurance, retirement, and other benefits, at 50%), so we use an hourly salary of $40.55 (For example, see , other salaries were from this main site.).

Other salaries, with overhead, are Web Developer ($36.49), Project Manager ($61.83), and you can look the rest up.

Management:

How will this project be managed now, and when you move into development and deployment? What potential risks does your project face in terms of success or failure?

Tools:

Explain what tools are appropriate and why. Among others, you will need some project management software that includes GANTT Charts (includes a list of activities required to get a functional prototype completed). Consider this in the cost.

Methodology:

Likewise, select a methodology and explain why it is appropriate.

Hardware:

Based on the volume you expect to sell (consider scalability), consider what kind of hardware on which you will need to host the system, along with its cost for purchase (or lease, or outsource the hosting) and maintenance.

Do consider the typical tradeoffs for almost every information systems development project shown in the triangle: time, cost and quality. As one changes, it impacts the others. Consider also the scope of the project. What specifically makes sense for you to develop, and when? The initial development might not include certain features that can be added later, for a cost and over a time period.

Budget:

You need to develop a budget for the construction of the prototype Web site.

Your budget should consider all of the above cost, scope and quality issues. Work out the budget in a reasonable way.

Plan:

You must also plan the next several steps in development of this prototype.

References:

Refer to Chapters 6, 7, and 8 in your textbook and the resources given in Part 1. This site may also prove helpful:

What to do:

Use the same teams that you had in Phase 1. (If you are not on a team, come to the front of the room to be put in a team. Your team will have to complete Phase 1 in order to start this assignment.

• Create an Excel spreadsheet to budget the development of the functional prototype. Be specific and cite sources for salaries.

• Create a report in Word that includes:

o The actual steps you plan to take and when, organized in a GANTT Chart (use PowerPoint or Excel, or some other software and insert it into the document). This is your plan.

o The scope of the project – how long you plan for it to take, and what it will entail (refer to your GANTT Chart). Mention the tradeoffs you can make in terms of time, cost and quality.

o A bit of verbal information about the attached budget in the Excel file.

o The specific people that you have on your team, and the specific roles they will have in this phase of the project.

o How will this project be managed now, and when you move into development and deployment? Consider risk and how you plan to manage it.

o The specific (software) tools you plan to use and why they are appropriate.

o The methodology you plan to use and why it is appropriate.

o The specific hardware on which you plan to host the system, whether you plan to purchase or lease or outsource the hosting.

What to Turn In (2 Files – one Word and one Excel File):

• A Word document report containing a brief summary of your idea and addressing the specific issues and questions listed above. This report should be professionally done and include charts and images as appropriate. It may not include names of nonperformers on it.

• An Excel document with the budget for the functional prototype. Put the names of the (performing) team members at the top.

• Include citations to any resources that you used for information.

• One Word and one Excel document per team.

• Include (only performing) team member names at the beginning of both documents.

• Submit via Blackboard

Later, if the results of this phase is approved, the company’s directors will approve the development of a real proof-of-concept prototype – involving an iterative cycle of the rest of the Elaboration (requirements gathering) and Construction Phases of the SDLC (Phase 3 of this project). [Hint – this will be Part 3.]

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